Where Worlds are created and Characters are born…

Mental Journey: Weddings

We debute today, a writer who uses the art of journal writingto debut her first peice on the Untitled Chapters website. We hope you enjoy M.A ‘s post

I’m sorry for taking so long. I had a kidney stone and i’ll leave the gory details for another day. PROMISE!

In the meantime, I’ll be gentler this time with the tone (don’t ask, maybe my stone was a of karma being such a queen (yeah.. sarcasim.. i can’t help it) or something, but i’m being nice today!)

I attended my sister in law’s wedding last Thursday and my sister pointed out something to me. She looked at me and said “the wedding is boring. Actually, all local weddings are boring!” this got me thinking as a matter of fact. They actually are. Our weddings are not about two people joining their lives together and expressing their love for each other (yeah well most of them are arranged anyway) their weddings are simply about a social commitment you expect people to fulfill whether you like them or not. It’s not about inviting people who will be happy for you and your loved ones; it’s basically about inviting people to make sure they don’t get upset even if it means that you ALREADY know that they won’t attend. And when they don’t attend, you get upset and revenge by not attending a wedding in their family.. Then they get upset.. What a chain reaction! When my (half American) cousin got married, her mother didn’t invite the whole family and everything related to us to the wedding. She basically invited those who her daughter holds dear to her heart. You know what happened?? Nothing. Those who were invited were the ones who attended and those who weren’t invited were not going to attend anyway. Plus it didn’t matter to them so it was a win win situation. The wedding was amazing. It was a small intimate posh ceremony and all attendees were the people who were truly happy for the bride and groom. The bride danced, the groom danced with her and everybody was just dancing. It was what weddings are supposed to be. A happy happy occasion. My wedding on the other hand, was a typical local wedding. I honestly didn’t want it to be that way, but my mother invited EVERYONE. You know what happened? My aunts did not attend, because my eldest aunt hates my mother’s guts (in laws, please refer to an older post to understand the whole dilemma). Here are the details. Okay I loved the fact that it was sort of over the top, but I wanted less attendees. I wanted an intimate wedding with half the people who were invited. It was funny that when my mother was putting the list of who she wanted to invite she was writing down the list and saying “okay I’m inviting flaneh, but she won’t attend anyway”okay… So… You invite people you know would not attend, but you get mad anyway. Seriously… WHY? And then there’s this other issue with weddings. Why can’t the bride express her happiness and dance with her friends. It’s her WEDDING DAY! It’s the day of her happiness isn’t it? Don’t lots of brides feel happy about their wedding day? So why can’t I just stand up on that stage and just DANCE? If I can turn back time I’d freaking dance on my wedding night and I wouldn’t care what everybody thinks. I’d want everybody to stand up, dance and have the time of their lives. That’s what weddings should be all about.. happiness. They’re not about proving to others how polished everything should be (okay they are, but there are other priorities) I kept telling my mother for months that I didn’t want to invite lots of people and I wanted people to dance and have fun. I’m against asking dancers to come and dance at a wedding, because I believe dancing is a sign of happiness and only people who are happy for the bride and groom should dance and express their happiness for the truly wed. my sister in law’s wedding was all about formalities. She married a cousin she hadn’t seen until her wedding day. So here wedding was about the fact that it should be as big as her sister’s wedding (who married a cousin she hadn’t met until her wedding too, but that’s not the point). Everytime I attend a wedding, it’s about the formalities. I attend because I’m invited. I’m invited because I’m a relative, or a friend, or a friend of a friend, or a friend of a relative. Being invited to a wedding isn’t about you being special and held dear to the bride or groom. It’s just about filling the ballroom with the biggest number of people possible and that makes no sense to me. I really hope the belief transitions into smaller ceremonies with lots of happiness where we can all laugh, dance and have fun! I want to see a journey far away from all these social beliefs about weddings and understand that a wedding is a symbol of joining the lives of two people. A wedding is a celebration of love, happiness and acceptance to the journey ahead. Celebrate with me, because life is a satire.

Ps. untitledchapters, thank you for accepting me as part of the female emirati writers! iyou have given me a motive to write more entries!